spots & stories (my reel)

Karen - Kashi Foods

If you think, as Gore Vidal did, that America is the greatest country in the history of motion pictures, go shoot in India. You will be humbled and amazed. So, we were filming in Goa, during Diwali, India's greatest festival. Day one, we were rained out by an electrical storm that caused the surrounding municipality to cut the power grid. Walking soddenly through the splendid corridors of the Fort Aguada Beach Resort, I passed a young man carrying a swaying tower of freshly laundered towels. I asked him, did he think it would rain the next day - our last day. He said, with the greatest confidence, 'Oh, no, Madame. Tonight is Diwali. The Gods would not be so cruel.' His prophecy proved correct.

We filmed this spot in Chiapas, where It rained so hard, our grip truck sank up to its tits in mud. The humidity distorted our external audio recordings, making them difficult to sync. And - for our cherry/chocolate granola bar product shot (not shown here) - there wasn't a fresh cherry to be had IN ALL THE WORLD. Ask me about the machete-wielding Zapatistas some time. With all that - ain't the film beautiful?

This is a great example of setting up a surprise in a public space and seeing what happens. Here, we placed a giant cookie jar in the middle of the 4th Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Our whole company was hidden, no film crew in evidence. We had lipstick cams in trees, a 35mm for the portrait stuff, a roaming 16mm, and 2 HD cams hidden in athletic bags. It was wild - we'd unveil the jar, run the cameras, veil the jar, and chase after the cookie thieves to get releases. We did this for 12 hours. Ask me how I later located the two homeless vets who'd written false addresses on their releases, so I could get them paid.

Shot in Minneapolis/St. Paul in -20º temperatures, the batteries on our phones and digital cameras froze. But, we considered ourselves lucky to have had snowfall the night before, the visual foundation of our enterprise. This was the agency's favorite cut, which included a pretty derned cute beagle. Snow-hats off to DP Giles Dunning, for separating the white Kashi frozen food packs from the white frozen snow background.

Here, I sorted through four years of existing Stanford+Connects tour videos (w/o transcripts), and executed a script and storyboard summating the emotional/intellectual scope of this remarkable, internationally produced series of TED-like alumni events. I collaborated directly with the SAA/S+C team from concept through rough cuts, motion graphic drafts, and final editorial approvals by SAA President, Howard E. Wolf, and Stanford University President, John L. Hennessy. Go Stanford!

Amazon Advertising – Here we played with cases of mistaken identity, comparing these folks, who share names with familiar celebrities, to Amazon Advertising, which always was mistaken for amazon.com. People used to leave us exasperated delivery complaint messages, and return books and other unwanted products to our shop. I produced these spots entirely in-house for a nickel. We found the people ourselves - Reneé Zellweger, David Letterman, Justin Bieber, Alice Cooper, Jessica Simpson, Katie Holmes, and John Stewart – and got them to agree to discuss their mistaken identity experiences on-camera. This is just one of the many videos we cut.

This spot was Kashi’s departure from their long-running Passion campaign, and was shot at Hatcher’s Pass outside Anchorage. Aside from the flat light, the most notable thing about this shoot was that there was little new snow, and this was where Kikkan Randall and the Women’s Olympic Cross-Country Ski Team trained. Plenty to ski on, enough for the landscape to evoke a craggy majesty, but not enough for that magical thrill – the look of fresh, lovely snow. Berkeley’s Tippett Studios did a beautiful job making our winter film extra cold and sparkling. This show, being a high profile Olympics spot produced for two competing agencies with multiple creative partners in five cities, was a bit of a hot potato. We got it done, and we did alright.

This was the first spot of Kashi’s Passion campaign. Filmed on Fernando de Noronha, an archipelago, nature preserve, and elite surfing destination, our crew were among the very few visitors permitted on the tiny plane (with limited gear) and subsequently allowed to set foot on this World Heritage Site. There were no cars on the island, only dune buggies, and we were scattered in various privately owned bedsits. Accommodations were clean, but far from glamorous. The moment I stepped into my shower, I received an electric shock. The water was running through an electric heating element! I then noted the rubber flip-flops set out by the bathroom door. Ah-hah, I thought. I put them on, and finished my shower. The footage covered by The Malloys, dp Giles Dunning, and the underwater and surfing footage captured by David Homcy made it all worth it. Sea turtles!